September 11 PowerPoint. Patriot Day, September 11th. PowerPoint on September 11, 2001 has over a hundred slides with photos of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania crash site of Flight 93. I like to play it with the music of Paul McCartney's "Freedom" and Neil Young's "Let's Roll." (Music must be purchased separately due to copyright laws) The anniversary of that tragic day is coming up. This will help your students understand the immensity and seriousness of the attacks on 9/11. Most middle schoolers were not even born when it happened, and although some of them have heard about it, most of them think this is ancient history. Have your Language Arts students write about what they feel after watching the photo slide show. This is good for Social Studies or History teachers as well. Slides advance automatically, but you can pause if needed. Quick review questions near the end. EDITABLE...some images may be distrubing for little ones, so I have put it in an editable format so that you can remove slides as desired. - HappyEdugator

Evaluating an Argument - Supports Common Core! Use around Earth Day, or any time you study nonfiction. PowerPoint slides helps students understand how to evaluate an argument, a critical reading skill. Students learn that evaluate means to judge a selection by looking for the author's main point, whether it is supported by evidence and facts, and whether the author argues against opposing arguments. Practice exercise with informational text included. Students will read and evaluate the argument from an excerpt of the book Green Planet Rescue by Robert Halpern. Good practice of common core standards and appropriate for Earth Day, too. Background vocabulary is endangered, species, and habitat. - HappyEdugator Aligned to Common Core Standards RI 7.1, RI 7.2, RI 7.3, RI 7.5, 7.6, 7.8, RI 8.1, 8.2, 8.5, 8.6, 8.8 Supports College and Career Readiness Standards grades 6-12 for drawing evidence from informational text to support analysis and reflection

Christmas Writing Activity - Revising the lyrics of Christmas Songs. Get students engaged in some creative writing before the holidays. Fun! Students can rewrite some of their favorite Christmas songs, such as White Christmas, Jingle Bells, and The Grinch. Three writing templates to get them started. Fun practice for expanding vocabulary...finding synonyms in a thesaurus, experinmenting with words. Photographs of projects done in class. Have fun! - HappyEdugator

End of Year Memory Book for Any Elementary Grade. An end of the year memory book or end of the year scrapbook that is easy to print out on standard copy paper and put together. Start the summer right! A memory book is a fun way to end the school year. Each memory book page is bordered in palm trees. Title page has an ABC background. Includes a place for a class picture, pages for school, teacher, friends, lunch, favorite things, etc. Like a scrapbook, each page has lots of space for drawings, stickers, photos, and personal mementos. Includes a farewell poem from the teacher and a page for autographs. Memory book can be used for any elementary grade, and can be adapted for middle grades as well. Also, if you want a smaller and sturdier book, go to print set up and set up your printer to print out on index cards. Then you can hole punch the pages and tie together with ribbon. 14 pages. - HappyEdugator

What is Poetry - an introduction to any Poetry Unit. Start off your poetry unit by asking What is Poetry? and What is a Poet? On the handout provided, students will read what T.S. Eliot had to say about it, and then come up with their own answers. Also included in this file are several pages of introductory materials a teacher can use to start students thinking about poetry. - HappyEdugator

Earth Day - Reduce Reuse Recycle PowerPoint. Celebrate Earth Day with these spring activities! Earth Day history, Earth Day flag, Earth Day anthem, Earth Day Activities and many different ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Teaches children the value of conservation and ecology. 13 slides. - HappyEdugator

End of the Year Superlative Questions: Most Likely To Succeed as ... Printable ballot with 32 great "Most Likely to" questions for end of the year activities - perhaps a classroom fun filler, an assembly, or to use when creating a yearbook. - HappyEdugator

Back to School Words of Wisdom Handout. Use at Open House! Beginning of the year inspirational quotes. Give this handout of important life lessons to your students on the first day of school, to parents and students at back to school parent night or open house, or use it as a send off for the end of the year. Twenty-one important thoughts and inspirational quotes about how to live life to the fullest. A good character building tool to foster respect and responsibility. Parents will enjoy it on parent night as well. You can also use it during parent conferences to start off with a positive note. You can also have students select a quote to write about as a beginning of the year writing activity. - HappyEdugator

Thanksgiving Smartboard activity - Thanksgiving Now and Then. Venn diagram comparing the food of the first Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving today. Add to your Thanksgiving activities. Students drag the Thanksgiving foods to where they think they should go on the diagram. Then they can check the key to see if they are right on the next page, and link to an interesting informational article to read about the first Thanksgiving! Fun November activity! -HappyEdugator key words: Thanksgiving, Smartboard, Thanksgiving Venn Diagram, Thanksgiving activities, Thanksgiving interactive whiteboard, Thanksgiving critcal thinking, Thanksgiving history, Thanksgiving research, Thanksgiving food, Thanksgiving common core Standards RI.4.1, RI.4.2, RI.4.3, RI.5.1, RI.5.2, RI.5.3

A Christmas Carol Subject and Predicate Worksheet. Based on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, this worksheet explains simple and complete predicates and subjects, and then students have to identify them in ten sentences that give facts about the story. No prep. Print and go. Key included.

Halloween Word Problems - Fun Practice. Halloween math practice in basic operations. 2 pages of addition and subtraction word problems and 2 pages of multiplication and division word problems. Teaches problem solving and critical thinking with a Halloween theme. - HappyEdugator

Earth Day Word Search Puzzle. Earth Day Word Search has 19 vocabulary words, including earth, April, conservation, biodegradable, ecology, environment, reduce, reuse, and recycle, and more. A fun spring activity and a useful time filler for use after state testing. - HappyEdugator

Math Activity - What is Your Name Worth? Back to school, beginning of the year, end of the year, or just for Math fun! Great counting money and addition practice. Print and go. Students get with partners and determine the value of their name by adding the values of the letters from the given code, and check each other's worth. Whose name is worth more? Another sheet has students figure out the value of their weekly spelling words. Kids will soon be figuring out the "values" of all kinds of things, and getting math practice while they are having fun. - HappyEdugator

Thanksgiving Homophones PowerPoint. Fun November Activity - a homophones search! It's an interactive Thanksgiving story to read. Students have to look for two incorrect homophones on each slide. There are twenty homophones (or homonyms)to find in all, two on each slide, and then students check themselves at the end. Key included on last slide. Fun and engaging, this original Thanksgiving story is about a little boy who travels across the country to visit his grandparents for a typical Thanksgiving holiday. Develops reading vocabulary and comprehension, spelling skills, and correct usage. Supports common core standards. - HappyEdugator Keywords: Thanksgiving, Homophones, Thanksgiving PowerPoint, Thanksgiving interactive, Thanksgiving activities, Thanksgiving word study, Thanksgiving vocabulary development, Thanksgiving reading, making inferences, frequently confused words, Thanksgiving common core

Behavior chart is a traffic light that you can display and use to manage classroom behavior. Fun for race car theme. Great to set up at the beginning of the year when you go back to school. This is a classroom management tool that should encourage better work and study habits. You can blow up poster size, print out, tape together and laminate. (Blow the poster up to poster size with a poster maker or have enlarged at a copy center.) Print out the 48 unique car name tags, laminate, and write names on them with transparency markers so that you can wipe them off and reuse them. You can attach cars to the posters using restickable glue sticks, which make them act like sticky notes. -HappyEdugator

Back to School Classroom Expectations PowerPoint. Just what you need at the beginning of the year. Use at Open House, Back to School Night, or Parent Night. A basic slideshow template of classroom expectations for students at the beginning of the year. Fill in your own specifics. Back to school expectations include behavior, routines, etc. Project it on your SmartBoard for the first day of school. Editable. Revise for yourself as necessary. I also play it continuously looping at Open House at individual student computers, set up like kiosks. - HappyEdugator

Halloween Horrid Homonyms Worksheet. A Halloween writing activity. Many students get homonyms (or homophones) confused when they write, and this worksheet will help them practice using homonyms correctly. There are twenty sets of commonly misused homonyms, and students will write their own spooky sentences using the homonyms correctly. To make it more challenging, students can try to use both ( or all three) homonyms in the same sentence! Students can work with partners or individually, as the teacher directs. They can then write a Halloween story using their newly learned homonyms. Decorative lined paper included. The idea can be adapted for other holidays as well. Enjoy! - HappyEdugator

Christmas Figurative Language Memory Game PowerPoint. This Christmas PowerPoint game on figurative language is set up like the game Concentration. This Christmas game provides matching pairs made up of a literary term and its definition on one slide and an example from literature on another slide. For a fun December winter activity, the examples are related to Christmas. Examples come from such works as A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, and even The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. Some of the terms used in the game are metaphor, allusion, oxymoron, paradox, symbol, simile and irony. Click on the number on the board to reveal the card. Click on the number on the card or the arrow button to return to the board. Instructions on play are included, as well as a link to a Christmas music video to watch when the game is completed. Revised and Updated. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! -HappyEdugator

Seventh Grade by Gary Soto Preview PowerPoint. Introduce the short story 7th grade by the author Gary Soto. Develops background knowledge. Information about the author. Images compare Fresno, California to Paris, France. Vocabulary connection includes words like tortilla, fiesta, and siesta. Students are reminded to think about the author's purpose and the theme of the story as they read. There are several slides with images of different Gary Soto books for students who might be interested in reading books by this author. I use this presentation to introduce the story to my students. Includes a graphic organizer of the elements of fiction which you can print out for your students. Story is about the going back to school experience of a middle grades boy who wishes to impress a certain girl. - HappyEdugator

Halloween Dead Words and Dead Verbs Handout. Great for Halloween writing activities, or even throughout the year. Dead words are overused words that have lost their power. List of dead words, dead verbs, and some more interesting alternatives that should be used instead. There is a place for students to add to the list. A useful tool for students to use for reference when they write and revise. 2 pages. - HappyEdugator